Will There Ever Be a Brighter Future?
by Sierra.BN312
Summary: War is hell, and the road is paved with blood, sweat and tears. Brighter future's are always expected when the dust settles, but there are time when it doesn't. It just gets worse from there on out. For the Gears of Sera, they may not see something better...something worse, a new enemy and a new war...they may not make it home alive both in body...or mind...
1. Prologue: Victories & Deals

" _The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy."_

 _- Friedrich Nietzsche_

Prologue: Victories & Deals

* * *

-Somewhere-

She looked at them with disdain, but seeing as it gave her quite a deal for her and her people she really had only two choices:

To stay on this dying planet and await the inevitable fate that would claim them. Even if by some miracle they could find a way to survive.

Or

To take their offer, and they would all live as the nightmare that she had feared so much would pass by and they would endure no casualties.

It would seem that the most logical choice would to be to accept their offer, but there was one thing about that the center one said to her that was the catch with the deal, as with all of them.

"We will give you three of your years' time in order to rebuild it, however once the allotted time has expired. You will commit your forces to our cause. Not only that, but you should be glad that we discovered one another, for our goals are not that dissimilar from one another."

She was given pause, with the previous deaths of her military leaders, it now fell to her to lead on the battlefield, but with their help, their resources and technology, it could be rebuilt better than before.

"And what guarantee do I have that you will honor the bargain?"

The one on the left spoke up, "We have no quarrel with your people, despite being one of the enemy…" She narrowed her eyes and threw a look of disgust at him, in which he did the same, though the one on the right showed his hand for her attention, "…which we overlook, due to who it is you lead. You vehemently renounce ever being an enemy, and claim with all conviction that you are what you rule over."

The one in the middle spoke finally after the other two's pieces had been said, "So what say you?"

She looked at them with caution, both options were indeed going to come with a heavy price, however the bargain gave her and her people far more time to live and rebuild…perhaps even find a way to purge the growing disease that would eventually ravage their bodies and consume them all.

"Very well, the bargain is acceptable." As if she had an actual alternative that had no prices. If there were, she would take it, but this was the best option on the table.

The center one smiled at her response, "We are glad that we could come to an agreement. Once you have rebuilt your army, we will discuss things further in detail. May the Gods smile on this day for all of our good fortunes."

* * *

-Azura, Last Stronghold of the COG, 18 A.E. and Final Day of the Lambent Pandemic-

They had done it. They held out for so long on their own against a seemingly all-consuming threat and survived. They won.

Many of the Gears that had survived the Locust War had come to help end it all at Azura, Colonel Hoffman and Marcus Fenix led them against all odds and they came out on top and they could build a brighter future.

Marcus organized a plan to strike back at the Lambent whom was assaulting the COG's last stronghold where his father, Adam Fenix was working on the solution to the Imulsion sickness that was killing Sera off by the years.

Hoffman sent Baird, Cole and Carmine out to find help and they not only found the remnants of the UIR, their former national enemy.

And his dad, well Chairman Prescott had him kidnapped the day he went to go rescue him, right out from under his nose. And for the next seven years he worked in secret along with several other scientists to stop the Lambent Pandemic, or at least try to solve way top slow it down. A few of the scientists had injected themselves with the Imulsion to allow Adam to study its lifecycle and ensure that he wouldn't die from lack of methods and to reduce the time frame when it reached critical mass.

Marcus went down by the beach to relax and unwind for a bit, Anya noticed this and decided to join him, she walked down and laid a hand on his shoulder. "So, what're you thinking right?"

Marcus turned up to Anya, "Well, what exactly happens now? The Locust disappeared to God knows where, the Lambent are dead, finally. So what's next?" She had a feeling that he'd think this, since he was a soldier through-and-through, with no more enemies and after his whole life being nothing but a soldier defending them all to his last breath, he was now lost in this new future. She bent down to hug him even if he wasn't a fan of public affection displays, "We rebuild, we live our lives to the fullest and make the future better for everyone and for ourselves. Just what you, your father and everyone else worked and fought for, for so long. And now that he's back with us, you and he can get that old father-son relationship you two used to have." She let go and bent down to his face to try and make him smile at least once, "That, and we have a victory party to get to."

Marcus actually smile a bit at that, he chuckled and stood up from his stump of a log on the beach, "Yeah, guess we do."

The island finally had cheers of victory and joy over the Gears, the world was now rid of the Locust Horde and the Lambent Parasite, and Humanity had won the fight. People were drinking and chatting to their hearts content, and while they did, Marcus' own little group were outside enjoying the fresh air and talking amongst themselves with their future plans.

Baird had been meaning to take a look at Professor Fenix's work on the data he compiled over the years, the Hammer of Dawn, the Locust and the Lambent, the Imulsion Countermeasure Weapon among other things, thought there was one thing that stumped him the most out of everything in the last three years since the sinking of Jacinto. Cole noticed the puzzled look on his face, despite having some laughs here and there so he nudged his best friend to grab his attention, "Yo Baird, what's up? Somethin' on your mind or what man?"

"Ah, it's nothing. Don't worry about it."

"Nah, come on. How long we known each other, you know you can trust the Cole Train baby."

Baird shrugged in knowing that he wasn't gonna stop with the questioning, "Ok fine, but I'm gonna ruin the mood just to give you a heads up."

"Well seeing as how you can sometimes do that, shoot brother."

"Well, you know ever since we sank Jacinto and started going mobile around the planet, moving place to place to get outta the Lambent's way, which only worked every couple o' times. We never saw the Locust again. I mean don't you think that's a little weird? And plus, how did Marcus' dad know exactly what could kill the Lambent off and burn out the Imulsion? I mean this is me talking about decades of research that well, solved the problem of the killer miracle fuel in almost no time at all."

Cole never really was one to think on things like this, though his main man did raise some good questions, "That's…actually a good question. Think the old man knows?"

"I'm sure he's got some idea." Baird walked over to where Adam and his son were talking, or at least attempting to talk with one another, though Adam seemed to let Marcus go as he walked over to Anya talking with Sam. "Hey, uh Professor."

"Oh, Baird. Did you need something?"

"Actually, I kinda wanted to ask you a couple of things. Like how did you come up with the idea to use a pulse wave to kill off the Imulsion?" Adam seemed to mull it over in his head, as they way he had originally come across the idea wasn't exactly quite believable and he himself couldn't truly believe it, "That's actually a complicated question, but at the same time it's a simple one. Follow me." He turned around towards a large rock that jutted up from the sand, and lifted up a false rock that no one would've suspected and placed his hand on a scanning pad that fit his palm perfectly and a computerized voice sounded off to him, getting a few others in Marcus' group attention also and himself, "Uh, dad? What're you doing?"

 _"Welcome Professor Adam Fenix. No further incidents have been recorded in 1,825 days, since initial contact with artifact. Have a pleasant day."_ A false rock lifted down revealing a pathway down underground.

That had caught Baird's attention, no one had stepped into this little hidey hole in about ten years? And something about an artifact? Interesting, at least the scientist in him thought. Adam turned around to see that Baird hadn't moved from his spot, "Well, Baird? You said you wanted to know how, this is the way."

Marcus walked over to Baird whom was now walking down the doorway behind, "What the hell is this Baird?"

"Woah, hey, I just asked your old man how he came up with a way to kill all the Glowies, and then he walks over here to punch up a door down under." Marcus just looked down to the doorway, and he felt something off with it, he heard his dad's voice saying something he couldn't make out and heard more electronic whirring down below, most likely his dad doing something else.

"Well, better make sure the old man doesn't break a hip."

"Hah!"

"What?"

"That sounded like you made some father-son humor, haven't anything like that from you."

"Yeah, well…shit happens." Marcus dropped the subject and followed Baird down the pathway where his father was getting who knows what. "Hey, Anya, I'm going to below to make sure my old man won't break a hip or something."

Anya just nodded and went back over with the rest of their friends, as Marcus and Baird walked down further they saw that a lot of wires heading down further into the tunnel, but what they began to notice was the sleek and clear metal that began to show through the rocks and several symbols that didn't look Locust or anything they had ever seen before. There were a few other doors that they passed through that held different security measures one a coded lock, a second a voice lock, and a third a retina scan.

Baird voiced his obvious insecurity about this place, "Jeez, what the hell's with all of the security?" It seemed that Adam heard him as his voice echoed through the tunnel, "This was something that only I along with two other scientists and Prescott knew about. And we kept it at that for good reason…" Marcus and Baird finally came down to a small room where Adam was cranking up an old console and getting some papers picked up off the floor, and they took in its appearance.

The entire ceiling, the floor, and even the walls were all a bright silver with many different symbols that decorated the walls, with blue lights flowing and flickering here and there at different parts, "This is what helped me." Adam walked over to a tarp draped over something in the middle of the room, and as he pulled it off, it showed a table with some sphere with small hexagons making up its surface, with the similar symbols on the surface as it gave off a bright blue glow.

But the one symbol that stood out from the rest was on the wall, with a large circle around a hexagon, that had two bars on the upper left and right sides of the hollow shape.

"Umm…what the hell is all of this…?" Baird was amazed by what he was seeing, while Marcus was just confused, "Did you build this?" It was a stupid question really, but he doubted the Locust could've done this since they weren't too fond of bright silver and blue.

"No, this room, this whole complex that Azura is sitting on top of, it wasn't built by human hands, and not by the Locust…" The ominous tone that Adam used set them off on edge, and what he was suggesting well…it was only in the movies…

"Wait, hold on a second dad. You're not suggesting that…"

"Aliens built this place? And this is only part of a complex?" Baird was astounded at what Adam basically said.

"Yes, what I just said sounds ridiculous but there really isn't any other explanation." Adam turned to the spherical device and placed his hand on the device, "When we first found it, three of our people died when they found it, the ground collapsed and they broke their necks. We original thought that the Locust had found us finally, but we were wrong. We found this room and after scanning for anything else we might have missed before when this place was built, we found an entire complex that spanned deep into the ground, but there was all we could investigate as the Lambent was our main priority. But, just before we left this room, the sphere activated all of a sudden, but for some reason I couldn't bring myself to leave, not yet. I had to know what it was…" He moved his hand across the sphere as red lights came up with some negative beeps pinging, "…before what you saw, it acted differently. The sphere seemed to move with my hand, as when I finally placed it on, the lights were blue instead of the red you just saw. And…it gave me a vision of some type. I remember it, but the vision was vague as it showed me a planet with some twisted life forms and a massive wave of energy, that spread all across it, and it killed the creatures. That's what gave me the idea to use a pulse to kill the Imulsion."

Marcus didn't understand it all, and was having a hard time trying to understand it, and Baird, the smart guy of the Gears found it skeptical, but he seemed to understand it better than he did.

"So, some alien machine gave you a vision, that helped you kill off all the Glowies, and the Grubs, who will still haven't seen in three years when we sank Jacinto, which kinda screwed us a bit with Glowies, but still this…strangely awesome and complete bullshit in some fucked up way." Baird decided to see if the damn machine would work for him and walked over to it with Adam stepping back a bit, to let the mouthy soldier a better look.

"Hey, Baird. Don't go blowing us all to hell." Marcus wasn't too keen on this place, and with some alien device that even his dad didn't fully understand, didn't sit with him all that great. Baird just looked back annoyed, "Oh, come on, I haven't done anything like that before. Why doubt me now?"

"Because we have something that's alien, and no one, not even my dad knows what this damn thing does."

"Just give me a minute or two, alright, then we can go back upstairs to getting drunk and partying like college dumbassess." Baird was over the device now and held his hand over it, as it now seemed to do what it did with Adam's own before, and it activated the same way as he put his hand over it. However instead of being hit with a vision like the professor, instead a hologram popped up of something else, "What, the hell…?"

"This is amazing! This has never happened before!" Adam was astounded at what just happened, while Marcus and Baird were curious as it showed a hologram of a planet with six other nearby, each with their own distinctive characteristics, but the main one that seemed to have a beeping sound coming from, had large crater that made up an ocean, and an asteroid belt surrounding it from a good distance away.

"Is that…"

"An entirely new planetary system, and it looks habitable."

Then all of a sudden the machine went down and the room went dark, save for the symbol on the wall and the device. "Uhhhh…was that supposed to happen?" Baird, really hoped Marcus didn't call him on that blowing them to hell shit.

"Baird, what the hell did you do?!"

"Nothin'! I just did what your old man did and…"

"Boys, we need to go now!" Adam interrupted them as he pointed to the device, that now was pulsating with a pace that was quickening…a lot like a bomb would…

"Oh shit!"

"Let's get everyone the fuck out of here!"

The men ran as fast as they could back upstairs, where Anya, Hoffman, Cole, Carmine, Sam and Dizzy were at, Marcus yelled over their voices desperately trying to warn them all, "Everyone! We need to get the hell of the island, it's gonna go!"

"No time to explain, just get everyone off of here!" Baird was hoping that shit wouldn't come back his way, well he knew Marcus was going to give him some shit and bitch about it.

The rest of their friends, and the Gears heard them, while the Gears were away from their position, the rest weren't. All of a sudden a bright light emanated from the tunnel and flashed all of a sudden consuming Marcus and his friends, leaving nothing but dust in the aftermath. The others could only wonder what the hell happened to the legends of the war…

Now Marcus had gone through many weird things in his life. Killing a Seeder big as a fucking warehouse, dancing with Bersekers, giving a Brumak the shock of its life, putting Locust generals to shame, and even getting eaten by a giant ass worm and cutting his way out of, after its intestines began to fill up with blood.

Yeah, that was a fun day.

But what he just felt, and experienced was nothing like before. He felt like his whole body light up on fire and was ripped apart from the inside out, and then smashed back together. He was clinging to consciousness while he could as he threw up in a nearby, fountain?

He stopped for a moment to wipe what puke he had dripping from his chin, and took in his new surroundings. He saw that the fountain he puked into had a statue of woman in some toga with a torch held high in one hand, and a book in another. He saw buildings that he didn't think would reach so high into the sky, unlike Jacinto and that the sky had two different planets. One held several rings around it, while the other looked a lot like their own moon in Sera's orbit. But then he got a better look of the buildings, they all looked so futuristic and had thing screens here and there that some you could see through and the people wore clothes that were very different than what he remembered.

Now that he looked at the people, he saw that their faces were a mix of terror and curiosity, then he heard a voice boom over a loudspeaker, _**"Stop right there, hold your hands above your head, and get on your knees!"**_ He looked around to see the source of the voice, only to know see that his friends were all unconscious and on the ground, he ignored the voice when it boomed again, as he rushed over to see if any of them were alright. He turned his dad over to see that he was still breathing, something that he was grateful for…oh and he'd be kicking Baird's ass seven ways 'till Sunday.

"Dad! Dad! Come on, you've gotta wake up dad!" He heard the soldiers barking orders at him, but he ignored them. Trying to bring his dad back to consciousness. It was like back with Ephyra, he had orders to hold the line with the Hammer of Dawn and knew that COG command would send help for his dad, but he had to be there top rescue him, at least that's what he told himself. He failed or so he thought, and he lived with false guilt for the rest of his years in prison, and even when Dom came to get him out of prison, he carried that guilt but it turned in to resentment later on while in the slammer and even when they made the Lightmass Offensive and killed RAAM. Only reuniting with his dad made him realize how wrong he was to resent him, and now that he got his dad back, well...things were different...

"Get, on your fucking knees asshole!"

"Do it, I blow your head off motherfucker!"

"Are you deaf? Get on your fucking knees!"

Several soldiers ran up and began to cuff the rest of the Gears, and had medics with them checking their vitals. Three of them now had their guns trained on Marcus as he was still trying to get his dad up, but he had success, then Marcus felt the butt of a rifle slam against the back of his head, and his world went black.

* * *

-One Hour Later; Elsewhere-

A trio of troopers stood guard outside an outpost in the snowy mountains. The weather was a bitch to deal with, but it didn't matter since they were the comms station's backup along with a few other boys patrolling the area. If they lost it, then they lost all contact off planet, so they took this job seriously, especially with things so bad now in the war.

"Heard NOBLE Team had an interesting morning."

"Yeah, they surprised a couple of Innies trying to hijack a supply transport. Bastards never saw them coming."

"Innies vs. Spartans? That's not even fair."

"Did you guys hear about how some possible Innies tried to bomb Liberty Square, over in New Alexandria? The bomb apparently was a dud, and the idiots were all out cold."

"Well that's probably why-"

All of a sudden they received an order over the radio, _"Corporal Travis. Prep your team for immediate mobilization to Visegrad. We've lost contact with the Comm Relay Hub. Possible Insurrectionist activity."_

"Roger. We're on the way. Charlie 3 out."

The soldiers packed up their gear and equipment, and loaded onto the Transporter 'Hog. "It's bad enough we gotta fight the Covenant, but we also have to deal with our own fucking people screwing us over and watching us die trying to keep them alive."

"That's the job. And you can bet your ass there'll be more fire's to put out tomorrow…so stay focused. Let's move out boys."

Little did they know what truly had done the deed…

* * *

 _ **And so, with Gears of War 4 being a great success and the start of a new trilogy, I thought about doing a Halo-Gears story for a while, but I was unable to find something good and concrete until I thought, 'Hey, why don't I bring the survivors of Gears 3 into the Halo storyline?' I had seen many, many stories of everyone coming to Sera, and everything being mostly post-Halo 3, during Gears 1 type of story, but to me, they just didn't feel like a good crossover concept, at least to me that is.**_

 _ **This series will go through Halo: Reach, Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3: ODST, Halo 3, Gears of War 4, and Halo 4. This will take my Halo-Star Wars series place for the time being as I felt that it was simply too big, and too grand having to go through Halo 4, Halo 4 Spartan Ops, Halo: Escalation, Halo: Hunt the Truth, Halo 5 rewrite, Halo Wars 2, and a rewrite of Halo 6 from that franchise, and there would be Star Wars: The Clone Wars season's 6 & 7, and a rewrite of the events from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. So yeah, a lot of stuff that would require a team of writers and patience for the latter two Halo storylines. So this new series would do better as I would have less to work with on my own.**_

 _ **So please continue to read, review, favorite and follow my stories both here, and on my profile. Enjoy, and see you guys until next time :) !**_


	2. Unconfirmed Reports

" _Learning to trust is one of life's most difficult tasks."_

 _-Isaac Watts_

* * *

Chapter 1: Unconfirmed Reports

-July 24th, 0300 hours, UNSC Military time-

Vice Admiral Whitcomb had been on edge lately, with the growing raids from Insurrectionists on the inner colonies, the ever-present threat of the Covenant looming over Earth, ONI essentially taking the best soldiers away from an operation that he himself didn't fully agree with that would work despite the facts stating that it could, Visegrad going down and planetary comms a complete mess, and now some supposed Insurrectionists that tried to bomb Liberty Square in the capital.

He wanted answers right now, as he walked down the hallway onto Gamma Station where they were brought, he passed by several soldiers who saluted in respect and he did the same but with a nod letting them at ease. He finally came to the confinement unit that they were being held as an ONI officer, Lieutenant Elias Haverson he believed his name was, was currently overlooking a surveillance screen of the event that took place just several hours earlier.

Haverson looked to see Whitcomb, and saluted as he came to, "Sir."

"At ease, lieutenant." Whitcomb looked at each of the viewing screens with a few interrogators were finishing up with some of the supposed rebels. While a couple of them were still out cold from the explosion that was said to have taken place in Liberty Square, others had been rudely awakened and stripped of their equipment on them. Whitcomb looked back to Haverson, "So what exactly are we dealing with here? Rebels?"

Haverson shook his head, "No, that's the official story that the other people at ONI came up with. I doubt that these people are rebels, going by the armor that they were wearing and their names. We've had them searched through every database and nothing came up on them, it's almost as if they appeared out of thin air."

The vice admiral raised a brow at that, "Did they?" He wasn't going to believe that for a second until he had some actual proof.

Haverson sighed a bit, as the "Well sir, there was no explosives residue in the area where the MP's caught them, they had no weapons on them, except for their knives, which are made of some old material that we haven't had since the 21st century era of warfare, their armor is below the standards of our own armed forces, and their stories while told from different points of view, but all correlate to the same thing. But this man…" Haverson punched up one of the cameras, "…Damon Baird his name is, claimed to have activated an artifact that resembles the very same description of some the more recent alien tech that doesn't correspond with the same design of the Covenant."

Whitcomb remembered some of the files that ONI had sent to many of the higher ups informing them of the supposed dead aliens that the Covenant worshipped, the Forerunners from what they deciphered of their gibberish language. He mulled things over in his head, and he still had questions that needed to be answered, he looked to see something that resembled gears in a clock laid out and ironically labeled 'Cog Tags' due to their shape, with each with their names and military ranks:

Colonel Victor Hoffman

Major Adam Fenix

Lieutenant Anya Stroud

Sergeant Marcus Fenix

Corporal Damon Baird

Corporal Jace Stratton

Private Augustus Cole

Private Dizzy Wallin

Private Samantha Byrne

Private Clayton Carmine

Each of them had a dossier that detailed their military careers, which they were hesitant to reveal and more than likely left some details out. Whitcomb glazed over them once he decided on who he would be talking with, he picked up the file and walked over to the Haverson still currently going over the paperwork that ONI, or rather he would have to be filing to his superior, whom he didn't particular care for, and informed him, "Lieutenant, have Victor Hoffman escorted to my office on station. And have the others moved to a conference room."

Haverson raised an incredulous eyebrow at the vice-admiral, "Sir?"

"I have a feeling they won't try anything to escape, we are in space outfitted with several battalions onboard, all armed and _if_ their story is to be believed, then they won't have any idea how to escape, nor would they try." And with that Whitcomb left the ONI officer with his orders and in a bit of a bind with his superior, who essentially held jurisdiction over the case.

"Asshole Ackerson's going to have my ass…" He lit up the guard's earpieces, "Men, have the prisoners escorted to conference room A-3; Chief Jacobs, escort Victor Hoffman to Vice Admiral Whitcomb's office on station." A resounding 'Sir' came across from the guards as they opened the doors and had the Gears, oh so appropriately named, going by their armor insignia's and their tags. They didn't really have a choice in the matter so they complied if a bit begrudgingly, while Hoffman was taken to see the Whitcomb.

* * *

-Hoffman-

After the victory over the Lambent and Locust he had hoped to live out the rest of his days in retirement with Bernie, but fate as it seemed was a complete bitch to him, and the rest of the Gears. Having a nice victory party at Azura was a start to let it all out of their systems, but then suddenly, he watched as Baird, Marcus and his father hauling ass out of a bunker and a blue ray wash over them all knocking them unconscious.

When he came to he found himself stripped of his armor, COG tags, and anything else that weren't just basic clothes, and with a man and two armed guards in outfits that he didn't recognized. Turns out he was being interrogated by this man and didn't really have a choice in the matter to but to state who he was and explain his background and history a bit, but he left out several details in it. Not enough to warrant any major suspicion, but enough to satisfy the interrogator.

Once they left, Hoffman was now stewing in his own thoughts. Who the hell were these people? He noticed two insignia patches on the men, primarily the interrogator: UNSC and ONI, the guards lacked the latter patch, so he assumed that it was some special division of sorts like the Onyx Guard. What they stood for was all but lost to him. Where were they? The architecture was something he hadn't seen before, well as far as their uniforms and the room was designed, it wasn't COG, UIR or even Locust. Hell, the Locust weren't fond of the color grey and white or with the design of a bird with its talons clenched on a planet.

This was a military facility he wagered judging how he saw the men act and operate. He had been waiting in the room for a few hours afterwards, most likely to make the secondary interrogation easier as it was a useful tactic that they used back in the Pendulum Wars on captured enemies, and speak of the devil…

"Victor Hoffman, I'm escorting you to a superior officer for further questioning." Hoffman stood up from the bed he was provided with in his cell and stretched a bit before walking out with the security officer, "I understand, son."

The officer stepped out of the way for Hoffman to walk out and he motioned for him to move along, as two other officers were flanking him from behind. He took note of their uniforms as they were different from before; they wore battle dress uniforms with multiple packs of what looked like the standard for their own Gears with ammunition, canteen, medical kits and other various equipment. Their armor was more loosely fit and covered the major areas of their bodies being the chest and back, shoulders, forearms, knee guards, shins, and the outer sides of their sides. Though their helmets had large dark blue visors that covered a majority of their upper face, as it certainly gave them a much better line of sights than the Gears helmet did.

He was escorted past a viewing deck that had a good view of, well…everything outside the place he was being held in. While he didn't have a lot of time to admire the view, but it was nonetheless breathtaking and awe inspiring, he did see a planet with continents he didn't recognize at all, as well as other stations and even spaceships orbiting around the station he and the others were on! Now Hoffman wasn't too familiar with these sort of things, as it was more of Adam's department, but the theory of going into and travelling through space was still just an idea out of the films and television; a pipedream, and with the Locust threat looming over them just after the Pendulum Wars were finished with, it was gutted entirely in favor of surviving the war.

"We're here."

Hoffman was disrupted from his thoughts as the lead officer stopped him and he opened the door for him and ushered him inside as he saw a man in a white dress uniform, like one of a high-ranking officer like himself in the COG and the former Chairman Richard Prescott had worn before the fall of Jacinto and their constant relocations afterwards for survival. He saw that a chair had been placed in front of the man's desk and he had a stack of files in front of him as he read them over, he caught a glimpse of his mug shot that he had to comply with in the initial interrogation a few hours ago.

The officers filed in behind him, most likely due to not wanting a high-ranking higher alone with a possible enemy. The officer looked up at Hoffman, "Sit." He presumed it was more of an order than a request, though he complied anyways. He heard the door being shut behind him with the officers standing behind him at the ready in case he tried something.

After a couple of minutes of silence the officer looked down to the files and went through them as he talked, "I'm Vice-Admiral Whitcomb Co-CO of the Epsilon Eridani Defense Fleet."

Hoffman stood up in salute, to try and make things easier, though while it seemed the VA appreciated the gesture just a smidge, he dismissed it quickly, "Sit, you're not in my branch if your story is to be believed."

"Just paying you the proper respect, sir."

Whitcomb breathed a bit in preparation for what would be one hell of story. "According to these files and the Chief of Security on-station here, you and your 'Gears' have quite a claim, and I'd like to go over them again."

"I understand." He knew what was coming, so he just steeled himself for the disbelief to come.

"From what you and your soldiers have said, you're from a planet that is outside UNSC jurisdiction." This was more statement than question in Hoffman's mind, "That is correct sir. We aren't familiar with the UNSC, nor have we ever had any contact with it either. And by outside 'UNSC jurisdiction'..." He was about to finish though he more or less left it hanging hoping Whitcomb will fill in the blanks, "By outside UNSC jurisdiction, I mean as in not one of the colonies that we founded…and haven't lost in the last few years to the Covenant…" A sense of dread and sadness in his voice. Hoffman recognized it in reports from others when the Locust took a city or killed off civilians. But what was this Covenant?

He was curious and needed to know more if he was going to get the rest of the Gears out of trouble with these people, "What is the Covenant, sir? It sounds like some kind of crazy terrorist cult."

Whitcomb smiled a bit, it basically said, _'Good of you to keep up with your story'_. So, the VA decided to inform him, "Well since you aren't familiar with the UNSC or the Covenant, I'll enlighten you." He took a deep breath, as if he hated talking about this, "The Covenant Empire are group of aliens united by a single religion, and we are currently at war with them." The colonel in front of him now had a look of small shock, as this seemed to further prove Haverson's crazy as hell idea of them appearing out of thin air.

Now it made sense to Hoffman, and it shocked him somewhat. The Locust were one thing, but this Covenant was something else, that everyone back on Sera, thought was pure science-fiction, out of the movies and comic books. "Why are you at war with them? Who fired first? And just how long has this been going on?" This may be the chance, the opportunity, that he needed to find a way out of being considered prisoners to the UNSC.

"We're getting off topic here Colonel." He furrowed his brow at the Gear for trying to switch things over. He wanted to see his reaction, to this knowledge, and it did show some things. "Now, back to you and your soldiers. For the last eighteen years, you and the Coalition of Ordered Governments, the COG, have been fighting off two non-human threats called the Locust Horde and the Lambent. Both of which are now dead on your planet, and before you found yourselves here on Gamma Station, you were celebrating your victory over them. Is that correct?" He looked up to see Hoffman nod his head to answer before continuing, "And while you were celebrating, three men: Sergeant Marcus Fenix, Corporal Damon Baird, and a former Major Adam Fenix came running out of a bunker underneath the ground as a bright wave of some form of light washed over you all, and you were discovered in Liberty Square in what looked to be a failed bombing attempt." His voice was laced with skepticism and doubt at how they got here.

Hoffman had to agree with what he was implying. Even he would be doubtful of these claims, "I have to admit sir, it doesn't sound believable in the slightest, but it is the truth. And nothing but the truth. If there is anything me or my Gears can do to prove that, we would be happy to do so." Hoffman watched Whitcomb's face to gauge his reaction. At first there wasn't really anything to describe, but then the VA smiled a bit, before it dropped back down into a neutral expression. It was almost as if he was considering the offer before putting it on a shelf, if he did.

"Despite your generous offer, Colonel Hoffman. I just can't take that chance…" He got out of his seat and walked to the viewing window at the back, "…especially now. It's risky to open ourselves up like that."

This was starting to sound a little familiar to Hoffman, "Why, sir? What's going on right now?" He didn't want to get stonewalled, as he got enough of that crap from Prescott, and some of his damn secrets nearly got them all killed in the past. He needed to know what was so bad, though he had one guess, and the VA would confirm that for him, though he didn't realize just how bad the news would be.

"Well since you are 'unaware' of what's been going on, let's just go along with your story. Right now, humanity has been at war with the Covenant Empire for the last 30 years. We're facing extinction as billions upon billions of lives have been lost, and more than likely billions more will die in the future before the ashes are done falling. We've just been hanging on barely to stop them, for what feels like a tidal wave of genocide that we can only lessen and we're unable to stop." Whitcomb walked back to his chair and looked Hoffman in the face to see how he was taking this little history lesson. So far, the Colonel was holding up, but he was rather calm, but also on edge seeing as his hands were clenching onto the arms.

"It started in 2525 on the agricultural planet Harvest, our outermost colony as it was two months away from the nearest colony under our jurisdiction. Contact with the planet went dark, and any attempt to establish communications were met with nothing, so HIGHCOM sent a fleet to investigate the cause, only one ship made it back, and it was badly damaged, barely clinging to life as it was. This was our first encounter with the Covenant, apparently, we disrespected their religion just for existing, and insulting their damn heathen Gods." Hoffman could feel the hate rolling off the VA. He could understand himself, but while the Locust attacked them to try and escape from the Lambent which was killing everything on the planet, they never attacked them out of disrespecting them. While he hated the Locust, he could understand their desperation to survive.

"I'm going to take a guess and say that they never offered a single surrender to you?"

Whitcomb just gave a mock laugh, "The Covenant don't understand the meaning of the word surrender. The only thing they seem to understand is whether you fight and live, or fight and die. And even then, our victories have been small, our latest victory on Sigma Octanus IV was something of pure luck and the fact that the enemy was distracted with something else other than killing humans." His face contorted in to one that of rage and anger, and his voice was filled with venom, but he kept it level and professional. Or at least as best he could, "They attack colonies, not because of their military importance, no strategic or tactical value. Only just because humans happen to live there. Small farming worlds, and other civilian dominant colonies are glassed and bombarded overnight and wiped out. Every engagement we get into turns into a last stand, even so, we get lucky due to other circumstances, it took us five years to retake Harvest, but it's just a ball of fire and nuclear winters, we'll be lucky if the planet becomes habitable again in the next century or so due to the amount of damage done to the it, and others I'd wager between 50 to 60 years before we can even think about recolonizing. When we manage to bring down an army and its armada, they don't get pissed or afraid, they just get agitated and send another to take their place. We've kept Earth, the home planet of humanity, a secret from them since the beginning and we've done everything in our power and minds to keep it that way, but it won't be for long. Right now, the planet Reach…" He gestured outside the glass down below, "…is the final stronghold before they walk up to Earth's doorstep, and then our true last stand begins. 800 of our colonies gone in the war, and while we still have a handful of them, we've been out of contact with them for so long, I doubt that they'd be so inclined to help out as we've been pulling back our military assets to Reach and Earth. That's how bad this war has gotten Colonel." He finished with an exasperated sigh.

To Hoffman, this was all too familiar. An enemy who would not stop for any reason, they offered no terms of surrender, they gave no quarter, they attacked indiscriminately at everything that was the enemy. To him, this was the Locust War all over, but much, much worse…after a moment of silence, Hoffman spoke up, "Vice Admiral Whitcomb, with things this bad right now, I am offering myself and my Gears full service to your war effort against the Covenant. When I joined the military, I swore to protect my fellow soldiers and my country. When the Locust emerged on E-Day, I took an oath to protect humanity regardless of the threat, and I see no reason why I and my men shouldn't stand and help you against the Covenant."

Whitcomb seemed to mull it over in his head for a bit, again he offered to show they were not an enemy, but there were regulations, protocols and rules to follow concerning things like this, though he had a feeling this was a very…very unique situation. "As honorable as your offer is once again, I'm afraid it isn't that easy. Were it up to me, I would have you under my command, but on a very short leash mind you, as I'm still trying to wrap my head around your story, but it isn't. So, for now, I'll have security here escort you to the rest of your men, and you can explain things to them. Right now, I have other pressing matters to attend to, oh. Just a little free advice, if you're interviewed by a name of Ackerson, which you most likely will in the future. I'd be careful around the man if I were you Colonel, he's not as open or flexible with things as I am. That and he's annoying; a goddamn spook, so watch yourself around him."

Well, that was one thing Hoffman hated, spooks. Among other things… "Much appreciated, sir."

And with that, Hoffman was escorted out of the office and back to the conference room with the rest of the Gears, who had to explain the situation to them, while Whitcomb was needed in a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, some of whom were on the security Council along with him, and one who he particularly didn't like…

As he found himself in front of the meeting room, two guards were present who while had their orders, and let Whitcomb into the meeting along with the other high ranking officials of their respective branches and a few others in charge of the military down below on planet and on station.

From the Navy, there was Admiral Roland Freemont as well as his other Vice Admiral, Michael Stanforth and Fleet Admiral H.T. Ward, from the Army there was Major General Nicolaus Strauss and a viewing screen of Colonel Urban Holland whom couldn't be in person as he was dealing with the problem of downed planetary comms, General William Dellert of the Air Force, General Adam Hogan of the Marine Corps and accompanying him was Lieutenant Commander James Horace of the 105th Shock Troops Division, the ODST's who had seen most of the war and were veterans of many battles or rather the ones where they escaped with their lives, or on the rare occasion of winning. And lo and behold the one person whom many just tolerated was ONI Colonel James Ackerson, who was in a discussion with Holland.

"I don't think you understand here Ackerson." His voice brimming with annoyance and urgency, "We could be dealing with a very dangerous situation here right now, and because of you stonewalling me due to 'gross misallocation of valuable resources' it could take another week before we get planetary comms back online. If you would just give me NOBLE Team…" He was cut off rather rudely by the ONI Colonel, "And as I've said before, using the Spartans for a minor inconvenience for the situation is as stated before. A gross misallocation of valuable resources. Army personnel are more than adequate for the task…" He had no interest in any further debate with Holland, he turned to see Whitcomb enter the room and changed the subject, "…now that Vice Admiral Whitcomb is here, we can get started with the initial point of the meeting." As they took their seat at the round table Ackerson passed out files labeled Operation: RED FLAG in big bold black letters. While Ackerson, Danforth and Whitcomb were aware of said operation, everyone else wasn't, and most likely neither was Lord Hood back on Earth in Sydney which was something that many people in the room were not happy about.

"Our intelligence has made a breakthrough gentlemen. We've recently come across an 8th species part of the Covenant, the 'Prophets' as they're so called, the leaders of the Empire." Ackerson punched up a few keys to display the hologram of the species in its gravity throne. "We believe as of late more and more of these Prophets have been traversing with Covenant fleets, both big and small, in search of artifacts that are of significance to their religion. Now the primary plan behind this is to cripple one of these Covenant vessels, which will most likely be a CCS-class Battlecruiser or CAS-class Assault Carrier, board it, and capture one of these Prophets as such." He pulled up a demonstration of the operation and spoke along with the demo.

Several thoughts ran through their minds, at this, though Admiral Freemont was curious about the details, "Who all will be involved in this operation? Who will board the ship? Who's in command? And how exactly would we get close enough to board it."

"Captain Jacob Keyes will be in command of RED FLAG, and the ship we've selected is the _Pillar of Autumn_. The Spartan-II's…" He said with a hint of venom that wasn't missed by everyone else, "…will be the ones to board and capture the enemy VIP, since _this_ is the mission they were made for, we're recalling all of them for it." It was no surprise that Ackerson had a strong dislike of the Spartan-II's and their program director, as he vied for her funding, that and being a former ODST himself and the infamous rivalry between the two soldier classes.

His voice returned to a bit of professionality, though Vice Admiral Danforth decided to take the reins instead "Boarding the ship will not be easy. We've intercepted a transmission on a small fleet of 20 ships, mostly composed of DAV-class Corvette's and lead by a few CCS-class Battlecruisers, one of which is the flagship is making their way towards another planet that they believe have artifacts that are important to their religion. A fleet to overtake the enemy's fleet with the _Pillar of Autumn_ in the rear guard will assault them as they come out of Slipspace, and engage the enemy, as our AI's will sweep through the ships to determine where the Prophet is located at. Once the ship has been identified the _Pillar of Autumn_ will then break the ship off and boarding procedures will begin. After the target, has been extracted back within to friendly borders, the fleet will then initiate a full retreat to Rally Point Omega at these coordinates as per Cole Protocol, and then return to Reach afterwards for interrogation of the Prophet." He finished up what Ackerson probably would've bastardized a bit considering that the Spartans were the ones that would most likely take the supposed fame of capturing a Prophet for the first time in the war's history.

Though that still brought up the question as to why Lt Cmdr. Horace was here, as he wasn't that high up in the ranks, "We're also going to be attaching a battalion of ODST's to the _Autumn_ under Keyes' command as added support just in case the Spartans get their hands a little too full. Hence why Lt Cmdr. Horace is here with us today." He looked at the man with curious eyes as to who he would be placing in charge of the ODST's for the raid. "Do you have any men that you can spare for us?"

Horace was going through the names in his head, there were a few he would recommend, but they were all either in other war theaters now, on standby back on Earth, or too wounded to keep going, so far only one name crossed his mind. "Well we do have Major Antonia Silva available as well as his second-in-command Lieutenant Melissa McKay at the ready, I doubt that they'll mind being assigned under Captain Keyes after what he pulled not too long ago." Everyone chuckled at that, the 'Keyes Loop' that the daring then Commander performed after grazing the Covenant ship to weaken the shields enough for the Plasma Torpedoes to hit their own ship and the _Iroquois_ Archer missiles to finish off the chip, securing their victory, and Keyes' promotion to Captain.

"Good, now that we've gotten that out of the way, why don't we discuss our new residents on station. Several of my Marines were delegated to guard duty and I'd like to know who it is we're dealing with here. The sooner the better." General Hogan brought up the incident that occurred down onto the surface, he had heard about it, but with ONI now taking jurisdiction over the case due to the 'strange' circumstances he wasn't too keen on being left in the dark.

Ackerson sigh in frustration, "They aren't of any importance to this meeting. These 'Gears' are just rebels who attempted to…"

"That's not what I read from the interviews, and what their superior officer told me." Whitcomb decided to interrupt the spook. It annoyed Ackerson and hurt his ego to be interrupted like that.

"I myself would like to know more about them. I'm not exactly comfortable with unknowns on station this close to Reach. Confirmation on whether they're rebels or not would be nice to know." Admiral Freemont wanted to ensure they had no possible attacks so close to home.

Whitcomb spoke up in a slight defense to their 'guests', "I spoke with their supposed commanding officer, a Colonel Victor Hoffman. He offered himself and his soldiers towards helping us in the war. He's been compliant with us so far, and he seems to be a man who's seen quite a bit of action." Everyone seemed to relax slightly, though their eyes shifted back to Ackerson who glared lightly at Whitcomb, whom wasn't fazed one bit by the ONI officer.

"We've run their names through the database, and we have no record of these people ever existing. They claim that an alien artifact brought them here, it matches the description of the same artifacts that the Covenant revere so much in their religion. They do claim to have come from and trained within their own military, going from their stories and their outfits that we found them in back down planet side. Once we have more info on them, then we'll see where to proceed from there." They knew what ONI talk was, as there was always another underlying message in it, even if it didn't appear to be evident.

Whitcomb saw through it, "You mean they'll be imprisoned for the remainder of the war, or quite possibly you'll ship them off to a ONI facility, run tests on them and use them as lab rats."

The ONI man simply brushed the accusation off, as if it were just a fly annoying him, "I never suggested such things. I merely stated the facts of how we will be handling this. Now let's continue on with the original point of this meaning…" Ackerson shifted things back towards RED FLAG as their thoughts were taken off from the Gears.

* * *

-The Gears-

Hoffman was escorted to a conference room where the rest of the Gears were taken too after being taken out of their cells. As he was taken back in Marcus was getting into a heated argument with Baird over what happened to them.

"You just had to do something, didn't you?"

"Look, I didn't intentionally drag our asses here, wherever the hell we are."

"Bloody hell, will you both cut the crap out? Carmine took a hit to the face…" Whom she motioned towards with Adam putting new wrappings around him, despite the small amount of medical attention that their captors gave them, he was in a bit of pain, especially when his helmet fell off when they came to. Jace, Dizzy and Cole stood off to the side looking out the window with the ships, stations and the planet in good view, while Sam herself and Anya were making sure Marcus and Baird didn't get into a fistfight and have the guards come in and restrain them back to their original rooms.

"…Hoffman nowhere in sight, and we're probably stranded over some other planet, God knows how far we are from home. The least you two can do is keep a cool head."

Baird seemed to let the steam out of his ears, Sam was the only one who would actually out smart ass him. Anya tried to get Marcus to calm down with her own way, "Marcus she's right. We have to stay calm and work something out. Where we are, who these people are, and how we get home."

Adam had finished up with Carmine's bandages, "She's right Marcus, we don't have many options right now." He walked over to his son and tried to talk him into reason. "Whoever these people are, they may be our only chance to get home. And as for the planet…" He walked over to where Jace and Cole stood, "…this, this is the planet that was shown by the alien artifact, back on Azura. It brought us here, through some sort of means that we need to know." By this time, everyone's edge was taken off. He had at least one theory on his mind that could explain how they got here, but more information was needed before he could come to a conclusion.

Jace, Dizzy and Cole were talking about the planet, "Man, have you ever seen so much green before?"

"Never that much, I wonder if they got any cliffside houses with a badass view? I could use another one like that."

Jace looked at Cole with disbelief, "You had a cliffside house with a badass view?" He knew that as a pro Thrashball star, one was loaded with money after each game, but never that much.

The former Thrashball player just smiled, "Yeah, I had one alright. I also had a statue in the atrium and a wine cellar down below." It was funny as hell to see people's reactions to what he dropped his cash on.

"Shit man. You must've had some major dollars in the bank."

"I even had my own vault."

"Wait, you had a private vault?"

"Yeah, the Train had a lot of things brother."

Dizzy remembered the old days when Sera still looked healthy enough, "Yeah I remember back in the day, before the Hammer strikes there were forests and great towns and cities. But after, they all went to shit. And after moving to Anvil Gate, the places just started to look, more and more like the Deadlands. Dust and sand blowin' in the wind, Imulsion spewing up outta the ground, and the damn Grubs just shittin' all over the place. I reckon down there, it's one hell of a sight to see. Shit I don't see any deserts from up here." It was nice to hear about the sights before E-Day, before the Grubs and Glowies started screwing everything up.

By this time, Hoffman had opened the door to the room with everyone now turning to face him with answers, "Alright everyone, before you start asking where the hell was I, take a seat. I've got quite a bit to tell." Hoffman began to tell them of his review of their circumstances of how they got to Vice Admiral Whitcomb, which Baird wasn't exactly happy about…

"Wait, wait, wait, wait…you went and told them what?! Are you insane, sir?! Why the hell would these guys believe that?!"

"What else was I supposed to tell them Baird? That we just, magically appeared out of thin air?" He sternly told the clearly annoyed Gear. "If we start off lying to the only people who may end up being or ticket home, then how far do you think any trust between us will go? If we do that, we may never get home."

"If we get home" Carmine commented off-handedly, to which Sam nudged his elbow a bit. She knew he was a glass half-empty type of guy. But there wasn't any need to drag everyone else into it.

It didn't really make Baird any less agitated as he sat back down, so he continued with the UNSC's status and their war against the Covenant, their losses, their history and just exactly how bad things had gotten. Everyone had their own reactions, all of which were mild shock, but familiarity in them. The Locust certainly saw to that themselves in their war…

Marcus wanted to know how they were going to from here, "So where exactly do we stand now?"

Hoffman sighed, "Right now we're still on lock down per say. I offered ourselves to help in their war if it meant to gain their trust, so for now we sit tight, and wait for an opportunity to volunteer for."

Baird was as usual, a buzzkill and less than ecstatic about the news, "Great, in one hell and into another, just what we need." Cole saw a chance to mess with the man.

"Oh, come one Baird. You know you love this stuff."

"No, I don't actually. Though I do kinda want to look at the rest of the station among other things, while we're stuck up here. Their techs gotta be way more advanced than ours."

Sam took a friendly jab, "Your love for the machine knows no bounds, Baird."

Neither Carmine nor did Jace liked being treated like prisoners, despite their position. "Well that's fantastic, prisoners until proven we aren't. Not the best way to start things off."

"Yeah, and what's with this thing calling us rebels? I mean, what are these guys like the Stranded shits we had to deal with after the Hammer strikes?"

Adam was quick to defend the precautions and accusations of the UNSC, "Now hold on. Let's not be so quick to judge here everyone. We've landed into a war spanning almost three decades, they're being wiped out, they're on edge, and we don't know the whole story behind everything." Marcus backed his dad up, "He's right, if do something; one screw up, then we're done for. We probably won't get any chance to get back home."

Hoffman wasn't able to get that tid bit of info from Whitcomb about rebels, "I'm not entirely sure what they consider rebels to be. If I get the chance, I'll be asking what they are. With any luck, something will come our way that'll give us the chance we need." As if lady luck was on their side, a couple of guards outside the door were conversing with each just enough for Hoffman to listen into.

" _Hey, you do you have any idea with what's up with off-planet comms?"_

" _Unuh, no idea man. Why?"_

" _Tried getting contact with the rest of the family back on Earth, but I got nothing but static and big fat '_ No Connection _' on my call screen. Isn't someone dealing with this?"_

" _I heard Colonel Holland dispatched a couple of Fireteams down planet side to deal with it, but no one's reported in lately. I think they labelled them MIA by now."_

" _Shit…someone's got to deal with it. I hate not knowing what's going on back home. For all we know the Covies could've already slipped past us and they're already at Earth."_

" _Hey! Don't say crap like that, it's one way for karma to come bite you in the ass. There's no way in hell the Covies got to Earth, and there's no way in hell that they're going to get past Reach. We've got every damn military asset here other than back home on Earth. We've got several fleets patrolling, we've got listening outposts, we've got the Spartans…hell even the new orbital MAC guns stationed over the planet, just ready to gut a capital ship with one shot"_

"… _I hope you're right…"_

Anya and Hoffman had been listening in to the guards, and it seemed like their chance came their way. "Well, it looks like this is our chance." Hoffman turned to everyone, "We may end up getting an opportunity to take advantage of." Hoffman was able to get the guards attention and request to have an audience with the people in charge of the station, he was hoping that Whitcomb was one of those people…the guards called in the request to a Colonel Holland and Ackerson, which Hoffman remembered Whitcomb's warning of the man, so any kind of double meaning he'd be able to pick up quickly. He asked Baird and Anya to accompany him to the superiors in charge of the station due to their expertise in communications tech, to which Baird wasn't exactly a fan of coming with them, and as the usual bitching he gave out on their way to meet with Holland and Ackerson…

"So, remind me again why I'm coming with you and Anya to talk to the head honcho's?"

"Because Baird, you and Anya are the best to solve this problem they've got. And I know, you've done some quick work on a lot of things with the Hammer, Centaurs, APC's…the works. You and Anya are the best at this, and we need to show that we can be valuable to them."

Anya tried to ease the tech man up a bit, "You shouldn't worry too much, we need this chance if we want to get out being treated as prisoners here." Though it didn't do too much.

"Look, I know that. But wouldn't Marcus be better have here instead of me? I mean, you know for a fact that I'll probably, actually scratch that, _will_ mouth off to the head guys when we actually talk to them."

Hoffman looked back to Baird, "Then you'll have to keep that mouth of your zipped unless it actually calls for it, and it needs to be restrained and toned down enough to not have us all put back into the rooms." By this time, they arrived to a command/control room with a good view of the planet down below with many computers, and devices with technicians working diligently on whatever it was they were assigned to, though there was an argument that that one of the guards that escorted them had broken up, and judging by the uniforms, these two were Holland and Ackerson.

"Sorry to cut our conversation off, Holland, but our appointment has arrived." The spook simply brushed off the army Colonel who had a look of displease towards the ONI officer.

Hoffman walked forward and saluted a bit, "Colonel Holland, Colonel Ackerson I assume, I'm glad you decided to meet with me." He motioned towards Baird and Anya behind at his sides, "These are two of the soldiers under my command, Lieutenant Anya Stroud and Corporal Damon Baird. Both of whom I've chosen to accompany and help out with a certain problem of yours that I heard you were having."

Anya saluted as Hoffman had done, while it took Baird a minute to do so since he didn't even know either of these men, and even then, he did it half-heartedly. So far, he wasn't too fond of this thing right now.

Ackerson was taken aback at what Hoffman said, he looked to Holland thinking he had something to do with it, to which the army man rebuffed by simply shrugging his shoulders. He turned back to Hoffman with steeled eyes, "What do you know?"

"Only that you're having problems with planetary comms down below, and so far, the men that you've sent have been declared MIA. And we figured we could help out with that." Holland seemed to be appeased by the offer, and he looked as if he was considering it, though Ackerson wasn't very keen on the idea.

"I won't ask exactly how you came across that information, but I will say this: We have the situation under control." His tone came across very threatening, to which Baird already didn't like this asshole.

"I'd say that's a grave understatement, Ackerson." Holland retorted with a gruff voice laced with one of annoyance and anger, "Right now, I haven't received any word coming back from the Fireteams I sent to Visegrad since last night. And with the signals all flatlined, we have no way of getting back into contact with HIGHCOM, and we can't even establish a line to FLEETCOM Sector Zero neither. All of which are extremely vital to our defense mind you."

"This doesn't concern you Holland. And as I've said, the forces that you have at your disposal or more than adequate." Hoffman was already liking Holland. He could tell that he was a no nonsense sort of man, that was straight and to the point, and he wasn't going to take crap from anyone, even if it was from another man of equal rank in the military.

"Considering that this is my mission to oversee, I do say that this is _my_ concern." He made Ackerson know that he was gaining control of the conversation. "If Colonel Hoffman is offering any kind of help, then I say we hear the man out."

Ackerson let out a small growl that only one or two people near him, could actually hear, he turned back to Hoffman with contained anger, "What is it that you want, Hoffman?"

"I want your trust. A chance to prove that we aren't an enemy, but an ally. My men and I don't like being treated like prisoners."

"Your case falls under ONI jurisdiction; _my_ jurisdiction." A way of saying _'I'm in charge of what to do with you, and there's not a thing you can do about it'_. "Your head isn't the only one's at stake on this, so until I can hear back from ONI command on Earth, you and the rest of your 'Gears' are confined to Gamma Station and you're going back to your rooms, isolated from one another. You all are unknown elements, and until we know more, I'd rather keep such things contained and under close watch before it blows up in our faces." Hoffman had a little stared down with Ackerson. Baird found it surprising as anyone, even Marcus at times had given into a bit of fear from Hoffman's rants and faces of anger. That is until Holland said the very thing that would set him off, and make him look like a fool.

"I'll take your offer up, Colonel." Ackerson broke from his stare down with Hoffman as his eyes widened in disbelief at what Holland just said.

"Excuse me?" Hoffman smirked.

Bingo.

Exactly what he needed.

"You heard me. I'm tired of getting stonewalled by you, we need off planet comms back up ASAP, and I need to know what happened to my men. You won't let me use NOBLE? Fine. So, I'll take Hoffman and his men. They're clearly willing to help and do something about this, and I say we give them the chance to prove they aren't rebels and on our side."

"But there are regulations and protocols to everything! How do we know that they'll even know what to do, even if they do head down there?! We can't let them into a UNSC facility!"

By this time, Anya and Baird spoke up in defense to their skills, "Sir, I enlisted as communications officer and tactician. I know any, and all types of hardware and software within comms tech, give me a schematic of the relay, a quick rundown on the station's components and I can point out the problem with it."

"You give me something to fix or improve, then I'm pretty much the guy. My fixes are solid, any else that says otherwise are dumbasses." Hoffman would've reprimanded Baird, but seeing the look on Ackerson's face was priceless

"I chose Baird and Stroud specifically for this mission. They're the best suited for the work needed for your comms array problem, and we will find Colonel Holland's MIA Fireteams."

Ackerson was losing, and he knew it, by now Holland knew he would do whatever it took to keep them on station, so he made an offer before he blew gasket, "How about a compromise then, Ackerson? You let me take NOBLE off the leash, they keep an eye on Hoffman and his men, you get me off your ass, and I get my team to fix my relay and find out what the hell happened down there."

Ackerson let out a long sigh, "Fine. You'll get NOBLE Team, Holland. You want the Gears then? Fine, you'll get them, but whatever that happens down there is on your head."

"I'll accept full responsibility for their actions." He complied. It's true, he was taking a big risk by taking the helping hand of Hoffman, as this went against all regulations.

Hoffman grinned at that, they had their mission, now all they needed was to get geared up. "Good to hear that, Colonels. We'll need to get set for the mission."

Though just as luck would have it, Asshole Ackerson had one thing to say.

"You Gears may be going on the mission, but remember, the Spartans are in charge. Not you. You're there to assist, nothing more, nothing less."

Spartans, an interesting name for a group of soldiers, but then again… "I have no problem being under someone else's command."

"I'm not liking the sound of this asshole's voice." Baird whispered over to Anya, who silently agreed with the mouth soldier.

"If that's the case, then might I recommend you assign another one of your Gears to lead the team. Someone that will be willing to obey the Spartans orders."

Hoffman had his fair share of political games in the military. When he first came back from Anvil Gate after betraying his word to the UIR when the terms of surrender were made, several other officers and Gears had said several things to him, that were both to his face and behind his back about his actions that day to hold the fort. He learned pretty well after that to see shit in between people's teeth. "What's with the double meaning words Ackerson?"

"I think that the soldier under a man's command says a lot about himself. If your Gears can prove themselves adequate for the task…" Baird noted that he seemed to love that fucking word, "…and that you all are allies, then I would be more inclined to allow you in on future Covenant centered operations and battles. You'll be let off the hook with no problems, since we can't contact ONI HQ back on Earth, you would have no barriers then."

Anya had a good guess as to what Ackerson was implying, "If anything happens down there, then Colonel Hoffman has to take the fall for it then." Not a question as much as it was a statement. She didn't like that he was basically being used as a hostage, and dangled over their heads not to fuck up. They had to deal with the same thing in Char with Griffin and his people.

"I'm not going to let risks get bigger while I still can, you could slip away while you're down there, and if that happens…" He let it hang in the air to try and intimidate them, they weren't. While Baird and Anya stood quiet, Hoffman on the other hand, well he was known for many things…

Let it be known that he was a man that didn't take crap from anyone, regardless of their position or from another planet, "If you think that I'm going to be intimidated by you, then you must be joking. I've stared men with more power than me in the face and I've put them in their damn place, I'll be damned if I let someone call me a coward or bad commander. You want someone else to lead my squad? That's just fine with me. But don't you dare, call me or my men fucking cowards. You understand me, Colonel Ackerson?" By this time, the guards were ready to take Hoffman away as he was practically in Ackerson's face, who despite the face he was putting on, Hoffman did catch out of the corner of his eye a bead of sweat dripping down the side of Ackerson's head.

He backed off to ease the tension in the room, which soon enough Holland cleared his throat to get things going, "Now that we've come to an agreement, you'll need to know the basics behind it. Visegrad is one of our main comm HUB's on Reach, and it's the only one that we've delegated to off planet communications. We have reason to believe that Insurrectionists are behind it."

"Insurrectionists? That a special Covie ops group?"

Holland shook his head, "No, they're anti-UNSC rebel humans. The Spartans took care of the major holdouts before our war with the Covenant broke out, and they finished what was left, or so we thought. They'd rather sit back and watch Earth burn with a bag of popcorn in hand."

This while didn't surprise the Gears as this sounded similar to their situation with the Stranded when they fought the Locust, but it still made them arch their brows in complete confusion at this. Humans fighting humans while they were systematically being wiped out by the billions?

"You've got to be kidding me…" Hoffman was confused at this, as to why the hell they were doing this, while Anya was at a loss for words at this revelation.

Baird just groaned, "Great, more assholes that like to think they're so damn special and they aren't going to get their place on the chopping block. Well nice to know that some things stay the same, even when it does change."

Holland while ignored the language, he did acknowledge the truth of them, "Colonists, mostly from what's left of the Outer Colonies. They just don't feel any attachment left to Earth. They hold onto more where they were born instead where we all came from, and not even the threat of the Covenant looming over them with a fleet to glass them all to hell can make them think twice about attacking us."

That was it for Hoffman, now he certainly wanted his team down there to put these rebels in their place. They had to deal with Stranded for the better part of the Locust War when the Hammer strikes were done and the ashes finished falling, but this was different. The Stranded didn't fuck with the COG too much unless they were desperate, these Insurrectionists were full blown terrorists. "If that's what's going on, then my team is ready to put them down like the dogs they are."

Holland was glad to finally have something done about Visegrad, "Head back and get your man Colonel, I'll make sure to have NOBLE team notified and for field evaluation. The Spartans will have the say, not Ackerson."

With that, everyone went about the business, oblivious to the threat below.

* * *

-UNSC Outpost 1483-D; Current bunk of NOBLE Team-

DOT had the Commander up an early with the sun still barely shining through. Though this was about the same time they were supposed to get up, but given the recent rebel raid they took out, they deserved some R&R. But given they were Spartans, they were always on call for missions, one after another if need be.

"Alright DOT, what do you have for me?"

"Colonel Urban Holland has a message for you."

"Thank you." Hopefully it would be more information on the new woman that would be their new Six, after losing Thom, the team had little time to mourn with the growing raids, and Covenant battles getting closer to Reach, it felt to little and too soon to have someone else stuck back in his shoes. They had been a team for at least five years, with no casualties taken before Thom.

He had hoped that the Brass would send him either Rosenda or Kevin perhaps to fill in for the Six spot, but instead ONI sent one of their own, whom was from Kat's company. Though there was a lot of black ink in the files concerning her.

Carter punched up the laptop and had Holland already on the other end waiting patiently to give him them run down. "Colonel Holland, sir." He stood at attention to pay him the proper respect as he was trained and drilled to do.

" _Commander Carter, good to see you up and about son."_

"What do you have for us, sir?"

" _Well I've got some good news and interesting news for you. Though I'll just give you the good first. I've got a mission for you, and your team today."_

"Good to hear that." This was good, giving a field evaluation was better than one just standing and questioning their abilities and history. A mission was also good, Emile had been itching for a fight after the rebels gave him the middle finger in the heat of battle, especially when one of said rebels managed to get away. "When will briefing be at?"

" _Have your team ready at 0730 hours. Now the interesting news is part of said mission."_ Holland had taken a breath, _"I was able to get you off the leash after some brow beating with Ackerson, though you know how he is ninety percent of the time. I assume you heard about the Liberty Square incident?"_

Carter thought back to the news from RCNN (Reach Central News Network), it was shortly after they got back from the rebel raid. He heard some other possible rebel cell had bombed the capital in some attempt and the bomb misfired, but the rebels were out cold save for one or two when the MP's arrived on the scene to take them into custody. "Vaguely, just that some rebels had a bomb that misfired and they were taken in."

" _Well, that's the official story ONI had made up."_ Holland took another breath as if he was preparing for the commander's disbelief. _"What actually happened was a group of Human soldiers had been teleported by an unknown alien artifact, that was neither Human nor Covenant in origin based off their description of the thing, from a planet that is outside UNSC space."_

That grabbed Carter's attention. A group of Humans that were from a planet not discovered by the UNSC? That seemed literally impossible, every colonization ship had been cataloged and the records kept intact and never had they had a colony ship misplaced, other than the one enroute to Sigma that had the engine malfunction.

"Humans that aren't UNSC…but they aren't rebels?"

" _So they claim; I had a chat with their commanding officer, Colonel Hoffman and they're sticking with their story. At least ten of them came from their planet by sheer accident as was the artifacts activation."_

The air seemed to just halt along with Carter, until he broke the tension per say, "Sir, is this some sort of joke, or prank?" To him, this just wasn't possible in the slightest. No, impossible actually, now he was a little annoyed at this.

" _Neither one son, even ONI is skeptical at this, but their uniforms and story suggest otherwise. These Gears as they call themselves have some military experience and Colonel Hoffman has offered themselves to help us, and to give them a chance to prove that they're on our side."_ Holland reassured the commander that he was being serious, and that the Gears really were offering to help them. _"I see Hoffman is a respectable man, and he's putting his head on the line to get this chance."_ Carter was about to speak up, but Holland beat him to it, _"Look, I'm trusting my instincts on this one, and they've never steered me wrong, not once."_

Carter did trust Hollands judgment, he had earned the respect he deserved, "Alright, sir. But you yourself don't seem all too sure about this."

Holland couldn't blame him, he himself was still skeptical at the story, " _Honestly, I don't have to believe their story, but they are sincere in helping us. They claim in the last 18 years that they've been fighting a non-Human, non-Covenant race they've called the Locust Horde. If this is even true, they may be some edge to help us against the Covenant. And we need every able body that can hold a gun against them, this war is coming to a close, son, and its coming fast."_

Carter breathed in deeply and let out an exasperated sigh, "Alright sir, I'm not one to turn any sort of help down. Although if possible, will you be able to requisition us at least two more spots on NOBLE? I have at least two others in mind that could work with us pretty well." Odds were that such a request would take weeks, or even months to fill out, and finding able bodies could take just as long, though Holland did pull through when he asked for help.

" _I'll see what I can do, commander. Oh, and you'll be receiving the dossiers on the Gears and your new number six. The Gears will be arriving at about 0600 hours, about thirty minutes from now. Six will be there at around briefing time, have your team prepped and briefed on the situation. And as for the requisition, send who you have in mind to me, Holland out."_ The comm-link switched over to five files, one for the Spartan; Spartan-B312 as it was labelled with the ONI insignia on the front of it, and the others were for the Gears. Well he can't say that he couldn't get any good reading done in the mornings, though he still needed the rest of the team up.

"Alright NOBLE, rise and shine! We've got some work to do!"

* * *

-The Gears-

The ride in the Pelican was more or less quiet, with the occasionally bitching from Baird, whom Hoffman had Sam accompany them to keep in check as she did a better job than Marcus. Hoffman had Marcus lea in his stead since he was more competent, and had more experience than most others with them.

Sam was also attached since the rebels were mentioned and they may have left some surprises along the way. Her EOD experience gave her the knowledge on explosives of all different types, and it'd keep them alive, in case they came across some planted landmines that she could spot and disarm easily.

They were given their gear back, but they were recommended to wear some Marine Cross-Branch BDU's underneath for extra protection since their armor wasn't as adequate to their standards. Seriously, who'd of thought that a small looking set of body armor would be superior to their own?

Anya and Baird were overlooking the relay outpost's schematics, trying to see where the problems were at, if the rebels took any parts that were deemed necessary that they could sell on the black market or for their own usage.

"It could end up being a blown generator that they took out."

"Or the transmission components were stripped along with receivers."

"Either way, we're going to have some work on our hands."

Marcus let the two just talk amongst themselves with the tech stuff. It just wasn't his forte. He had to admit, the Pelicans sure as hell had a better arrangement than their King Ravens. Leather seats, weapon racks, medical packs mounted on the walls, flight in space and the atmosphere, heavy 40mm chainguns mounted on the front, and one in the troop bay that came down for usage if need be, dual missile pod launchers. This thing would tear through at least five Ravens with ease before getting shot down. And he wasn't even aware of the EMP proofed systems onboard.

Sam nudged him a bit to get his attention, "So, what do you think we'll find down there. With the rebels, they think hit them I mean?"

"They're probably like the Stranded shits we had to deal with back in Vectes, though better armed, and they aren't amateurs either. Hopefully we'll get lucky and catch them by surprise, and find the MIA fireteams…though something just doesn't feel right about it."

"What do you mean?"

"I dunno. But whoever took out the comms hub, I doubt somehow, they didn't just up and leave. They had to of known that big guns would be sent to take care of things, and they'd be ready. Or at least I would."

"Let's just focus on one thing at a time, you know? Getting to know the locals, who's in command, what kind of weapons do we need. That sort of thing, we already were given some of their own body armor, though it feels a little tight one, especially with our own armor on top of it." Sam had to loosen up some of the straps due to it constricting her movement a bit. She wasn't going to lie, having two different armor sets on felt like having two doors on your body, and moving around was an absolute bitch.

"Right." Marcus simply sat back in silence trying to get some bit of sleep before they were throw into the heat of battle again.

Life just sucked that way sometimes.

* * *

-NOBLE Team Current Bunks-

Carter now stood in full armor as did the rest of the team, Kat stood alongside him, while Jun, Emile and Jorge were back over towards the building getting ready for the mission. Emile kept his helmet on it seemed no matter what the circumstance was, even during down time it was practically glued to his head.

"I don't see why Holland has a few other people alongside us for the repair job." Kat said a little irritated that someone else would be doing what she did, "I'm the teams technician expert, and I know the systems better than they do."

"Just think of it as having an extra pair of hands, and being a teacher to them. Holland wants this mission done quickly and having extra help will speed things along, he's not doubting your capabilities, he has his reasons." Carter assured his second-in-command that things would be fine, though at least Jorge was taking thing this in stride, Jun and Emile were more or less indifferent about the news of having these Gears with them on mission. Though everyone, well except at least Carter, still wasn't very well receiving to the news of having someone come in and replace Thom so soon.

It was no mistake that Carter, and especially Kat blamed themselves for what happened to him.

The Pelican with their cargo eventually came down to the landing zone, and the four Gears stepped of the ramp.

They got a good look at each other and while the Spartans were less than impressed, the Gears did see that Spartans were almost like mechs from a sci-fi movie, if they had their helmets on, they probably couldn't tell if they were Human or not.

Marcus walked in the front, followed by Anya, Baird and then Sam as they fell in as Marcus approached who assumed was Commander Carter from what Holland told them, "Marcus Fenix, Sergeant of the Coalition of Ordered Governments, or what was left of it." Feeling like it would be a bit better to make a better first impression, he stuck his hand out to see if they were anything but nice.

To his surprise, he actually took his hand and shook it. "Commander Carter. Spartan-A259, you may call me, sir, NOBLE One, NOBLE Lead, or Carter." He then gestured to the woman next to him with the mechanical prosthetic limb, "This is Lieutenant Commander Kat. Spartan-B320, you may call her ma'am, NOBLE Two, Lieutenant Commander or Kat. Follow me."

He and Kat turned back towards the building where the others were at, so far things weren't going badly for them. And no one was shooting at their asses.

Baird was already eyeing their armors, theirs weapons, the Warthogs parked nearby and everything else that was UNSC gear. He wanted to take apart anything he could get his hands on at this point, so much tech crap was just itching to be touched in his mind.

Anya spoke to Marcus, "A handshake? That was unusually nice for you."

"Well might as well make a decent first impression, so we don't get treated like grunts fresh from basic. That's the last thing we need."

Sam perked up, "And so far, no smartass comments from Baird. A world record if anything I'd say." The man just grunted and did throw a somewhat smartass remark towards her. "Yeah, sorry if I'm looking at the beauty of their tech and everything else that's from a comic."

They saw three others in similar but different high tech armor, one was loading up a sniper from the looks of it with his helmet off with a tattoo of a hand with arrows held in his fist, on the side of his face. He glanced up to them and just went back to his work on another ammo cartridge.

Another was polishing and cleaning a machine gun that rivalled the Locust Troika's size. It probably held around at least 300 rounds going from the overly big ammo pack clamped on the side. The guy was easily as big as a Boomer, and no doubt that he could cave in their skulls with his bare hands.

Though the last one screamed _'Imma badass'_. He was armed with what looked like grenades and strapped across his left arm were shotgun shells, and knife holster on his right shoulder on an oversized shoulder pauldron. But it was the helmet that grabbed all the attention, it was a reflective yellow with a white skull that wasn't any different from a skull on their gear, though it wasn't painted, instead it was carved into it. How he wasn't having an obscured vision problem with it on, was beyond them. He looked up but went back to sharpening his knife on his arm where sparks were coming up every now and then.

They came inside the building where it wasn't all that different from their own barracks back home. Everything was situated and into the proper military fashion, though there was a table that had a hologram display with their own faces on them, along with their stats, and military records.

Great, an eval before mission time. Just what they needed.

They stood in single file side by side one another, Carter and Kat then turned to them and spoke, "I've read your files and they made some interesting reading, as did Kat. You all have distinguishing careers in your military and I'd like to go over some questions before Colonel Holland briefs us."

Baird could already feel the name of that fucking city coming out of his mouth, as Carter first looked to him, "Here we go." He mumbled to himself.

"Corporal Baird. It says that you used to be a lieutenant in your armed forces, but then you were subsequently demoted to private within the same day." He said with some grimace and confusion in his voice. "Your actions in the Destruction of Halvo Bay lead you to be, put on trial in the middle of the battle…" Which confused Carter as doing something like that was liable to get yourself killed no matter what in the heat of battle, "…but then the charges were dropped afterwards and you were demoted. Care to explain why?"

Baird, just braced himself as he noticed that the other Gears were actually giving him a surprised look, after hearing he used to be a ranked officer in their military. "Ok, I was just made lieutenant earlier that day by command, and I was handed a squad to lead. Colonel Loomis, who was the man in charge of Halvo Bay's defense…" He added annoyance to Loomis' name, "…Just didn't want to believe that the Locust weren't dumb animals with guns in their hands. They were smart, they were methodical, they knew what they were doing, and the general; Karn was his name, was probably smarter than half our top brass." He breathed in deeply after letting a bit of frustration out, and he waited to see if the commander was going to stop him but he didn't and simply took it as a sign to keep going.

"We saw that he took out a company of some of our best soldiers like nothing, and the only thing that we had that could kill Karn in one hit and end the battle, was the Lightmass Missile, which I won't bore you with the details, but it was enough to do the job. We went through probably half the city to get things done with grabbing the targeting beacon, getting the launch codes, retaking the base from the Grubs that had the missile, activate it on site and send it straight at Karn's head. We managed to take out probably a good quarter of his forces before Colonel Loomis came to arrest us for going against his orders of using the missile and instead to retake the city block by block that would be too see-through and Karn would've ambushed us at every point and killed us off block by block."

He took another breath with this damn story.

Yeah, not the most inspiring thing to talk about.

"Karn survived the missile somehow, and Loomis had us on trial the rest of the battle and pretty much all our guys were killed off, to the point of only a few squads and Karn coordinating the assault on the courthouse and we barely made it out after finishing off Karn and his forces. Loomis felt generous considering we saved his life and killed the enemy general and demoted me to private and he dropped the charges consisting of cowardice, desertion, the theft of military technology…oh, and treason also. All of which were completely blown out of proportion mind you, so…yeah, that's it."

He was expecting some sort of negative feedback from the Spartans, but instead they seemed to have a small bit of approval in their expressions but with neutrality mixed in mostly. Carter broke the silence, "I understand that sometimes in war, you have to make calls that you think is right, against an enemy that takes advantage of anything it can get ahold of. While I agree that your commanding officer was in the wrong when it came to fighting against the enemy, but I have to ask as to whether or not you'll be able to follow any orders that we give."

Baird saw that coming, overall, he questioned orders and often at times ignored them. Hey, sometimes it had to be done, even if it was in a weird ass way. Like that time in Jilane when they had to get the women and children out of the bunker when one of those bitches that went crazy and ended up leading the Locust to them, and almost got their asses killed for good out there.

Damn bitch was retarded in his mind. Thank god, she was dead, and not breeding more stupid assess.

"Honestly, I'll follow whatever order you give, but odds are I'm more than likely going to question it, if it doesn't sound like the right one." That was probably the closest thing to a yes that Carter was going to get from him, Kat brought up her own question, and directed towards Anya also, since it was mentioned that she and Baird were both tech experts, "What about your technological qualifications? Our equipment can't be similar to your own. Will you be able to do repairs in the field?"

Baird looked to Anya instead, he could feel that she was threatened going by her tone. This was most likely her field of expertise, so the comms officer Gear answered instead of smart ass Gear, "We're getting familiar with your systems, after looking over the schematics of the relay outpost we should be able to help out, though we do still need help since we wouldn't want to ground the planet and make things worse."

Kat seemed to back off with a simple nod at that. Anya basically told her that she was still in charge of the repairs as far as she was concerned.

Carter than brought his attention to Marcus, who guess his abandonment of his post back in Ephyra to rescue his dad. "Sergeant Marcus Fenix. I looked over your file, and it's quite impressive, though there was one thing that caught my eye. Ephyra."

Yup, he knew it.

"It says that you went against orders, abandoned your post, and assaulted a superior officer; Colonel Hoffman; and that your decision to rescue your father cost your military a vital battle, and you were originally sentenced to death, but a testimony from Corporal Dominic Santiago kept you from that, and thus you were sentenced to 40 years in prison. You only served 5 of those years until you were released and drafted back into the army. Can you explain what happened?"

Marcus looked down to the floor a bit, getting his answer ready. He looked back to Carter, "My father was all I had left of in my family. My mother disappeared and no one seemed to know what had happened to her, and I couldn't lose my father. I disobeyed orders to get him out of the way from the battle, and it cost us a whole city, and we were forced to retreat. I didn't blame them for the court marshalling, or the life sentence. They pardoned me when thing started to go bad, and I've stuck with the COG through the rest of the war." He breathed in deeply to continue, "I don't and won't abandon any of the soldiers that I serve with. And for whatever orders you give me, I'll follow them through and through."

Carter didn't say anything, and neither did Kat. For whatever reason, his answer was all they needed. The evaluations continued on with both Anya and Sam giving their own answers to whatever questions Carter and Kat had for them.

"Alright, I think that covers everything. Holland could be calling us any minute now, so head outside and familiarize yourselves with the rest of the team. Jorge can help you out with armaments, he should be cleaning his weapon right now. Dismissed." Carter turned his attention back to the terminal as he pulled up the file that Holland managed to 'acquire' from ONI and read past what the censors had made to her file, and he had to sat, he was rather impressed with her track record. Though there were other things that had him a little worried given her nature as lone act…

Back outside, the Gears talked themselves as they made their way over whom they assumed was the one named Jorge, the guy in the bulky looking armor cleaning up his machine gun. "Jorge?" Marcus started things off again with trying to be non-assholish to them, since it worked with the Commander, it would work with others.

The Spartan took a few seconds to put his gun down and stand up to greet the newcomers. "I am. Jorge-052, or NOBLE Five if you want to call me that." He spoke in a Hungarian accent and was rather calm, despite the edge everyone else seemed to be on. "Hope you didn't feel like the Commander was digging in too much, we're all on edge right now."

Sam decided to go with the flow, "It's alright, we understand. Though I gotta ask if you don't mind, we kind of noticed that you guys, well Spartans and all have numbers instead of last names. There something special behind them?"

Jorge didn't show any signs of discomfort with the question, though he knew why they had numbers, but hardly anyone else did, and it was kept that way for a reason, "Sorry, but I can't really say. It's classified."

She raised her hands in apology, "Sorry, 'bout that. It just sounded a little weird, that's all."

"It just seems kind of weird that you use numbers instead of names." Baird had some theory behind it, going by the whole 'classified' answer. He could tell that this guys had been fed something to make him so big, and the armors certainly didn't look cheap or light like the ones they had seen other Marines and Troopers wear back on Gamma Station. That 'classified' had to have been experimentation of some sort.

"It's alright, most people don't know and command likes to keep it that way." He gestured to the two other Spartans that the Gears passed by, "The one in the Falcon over there is Jun-A266, and the one with the skull on his face is Emile-A239, NOBLE's Three and Four respectively. I wouldn't bother them too much, getting ready for the mission and all. You know anything on what we're walking into?"

Anya answered on what they knew and what they were told, "Just that some rebels took a relay outpost and off-planet comms are a mess right now."

"Doesn't sound like it'll be too much of a problem. We get in there, kill some rebel assholes, find the MIA's, and then we all go home in one piece." Baird just brushed the situation off like it wasn't too serious, then again killing Stranded shits wasn't too hard, so odds were they weren't any different from them.

Or at least he was hoping so.

"I hope so…" Jorge replied with assertion and somber, "…with comms down like this, we're too open for attack. The sooner we get things up, the better." He walked over to a large shack, and gestured them to follow him, and revealed quite an armory with weapons that were much smaller than their own, "The commander did say that you needed weapons, well look no further. Take your pick, we've also got some attachments and mods in here also, whatever suits your style."

Sam just whistled at the sight. "If Alex were here, she'd be putting her hands on every gun here."

"This is my kind of scenary."

"Sweet."

"Hell of an arsenal you guys have here."

The Gears just walked around took weapons that looked similar to their own, with Jorge helping them out with their purpose, function and the weapon attachments. Marcus and Anya settled for the MA37 Assault Rifle, with extended magazines, a flashlight, and a laser aiming module. The weapon was the closest thing they had to the Lancer, though Marcus was hoping they had a chainsaw bayonet considering it saved his ass many times against the Locust.

Though Baird and Sam went for the M392 DMR, they equipped extended magazines, and attached flashlights to them as there weren't many attachments for this line of the weapon. It fit their precise style of fighting and making headshots.

Overall the digital ammo counters were pretty fucking sweet.

While everyone chose the M90 Shotgun which held more than twice the range and close spread than their Gnasher, and practically almost double the ammo, Sam went for the SRS99-AM Sniper Rifle. The thing had advantages over their own Longshot as with a higher velocity, higher ammo count, and the rounds were guaranteed a kill per round due to the size and design of them.

As for their sidearms, they settled for the M6D Magnum, dubbed the 'Head Remover' by everyone who used it, and it did not disappoint when Jorge demonstrated for them. A single round from the pistol literally blew a hole into a nearby rock that left pieces of it in small pebbles. Least to say, this put the Locust's Boltok pistol to absolute shame.

Shit there wasn't any competition. It blew the Boltok away by miles.

As they got the rest of their gear together, Carter recalled them back inside the building for briefing.

* * *

-Spartan-B312-

The lieutenant had been riding in the 'hog for a few hours now, checking up on her equipment and her rifle while on the move. She looked over to see the driver was ranked a corporal in the Army. He more than likely had seen some action, judging from the scar on his right cheek, she recognized it as close encounter with a Type-1 Energy Sword.

He was lucky.

Not many people survived a close shave like that these days anymore. Either you were fresh out of basic and thrown to the wolves on Day One, or you were an old veteran that was either crippled, in the grave or had one foot in it. The young were slowly becoming less of a scene as opposed to the old timers burying them. And at times they were parents burying their kids.

No one should have to go through that.

She looked out to the pristine valleys and mountains, and saw the beauty of the planet that it had to offer. Another thing that you rarely saw these days. She heard that some of the preserves and parks back on Earth were expanding and reservation/restoration efforts were made to allow nature to take back some parts of the world, since they were draining it dry of resources for so long, but she never saw them. Never had the time to do so.

She watched from the rearview mirror that two UH-144 Falcons flying overhead and went straight ahead of them, most likely their destination. She looked back into the black visor of the Mark V (B) helmet with the UA upgrade on the crown of the helmet, and on the right side of the helmet was an External Hardened Uplink for recon and scouting into enemy territory. She put it on as they finally arrived at the outpost she was sent to, to join up with NOBLE Team.

Her new team.

She was usually a lone operative, sent into hazardous situations and bringing down Innies and Covenant high ranking officers was her specialty, ranking as a 'Hyper-Lethal Vector'.

She stepped out of the Warthog in her black Mark V armor set, though she had made numerous modifications and attachments to the armor since receiving the suit. Her chestplate now held the Base Security attachment, her knee guards held the FJ/PARA giving her maximum protection & mobility and minimum weight, on her left forearm was the Tactical/TACPAD so she could link up with the Data/Net if necessary, on her left thigh was the Tactical Soft Case for anything that she normally couldn't carry, and finally her shoulders were the UA/Multi-Threat pads, maximum coverage and minimum weight. Being covered well and fast enough to outrun Elites was something she preferred.

She holstered her Assault Rifle and her Magnum in the holster as she walked past a Falcon with a Spartan, whom was gearing up for a mission or just keeping things prepped when the call came, though it seemed like she just came into one ac she overheard a gruff voice over a comm-link, _"Contact with Visegrad was lost last night. All signals flatlined at 2600 hours. I responded with trooper fireteams, all of which have since been declared MIA."_

"And now you're sending us." She saw from outside that another Spartan was sharpening his Kukri knife along his arm, making some sparks as he went about his business. She could tell that the skull wasn't painted, but rather craved into instead.

" _The Office of Naval Intelligence believes that the deployment of a Spartan team is a gross misallocation of valuable resources. I disagree."_ The Spartan stopped as she was inside and caught the tail end of the last transmission before a mechanical arm stopped her from going any further, another Spartan, a woman in light blue armor called over to the one in dark blue armor standing over the comm-link, "Commander."

"So that's our new number Six." The big one, whom she guessed was an S-II judging from his size and build spoke aloud in statement instead of a question. She essentially now had everyone's attention that was in the building, even the four people in odd armor standing over the holotable with the Commander and the S-II. She didn't recognize either of them, but she did recognize the main symbol on their belts from a leaked report in ONI. Their attention lingered on her longer than the others before they went back to the table.

The skull carved Spartan spoke aloud as he pointed to her with his knife, "Kat, you read her file?"

"Only the parts that weren't covered in black ink."

Everyone just returned back to the table with the comm-link still opened, "Anyone claimed responsibility, sir?"

" _ONI thinks it might be the local Insurrection. Five months ago, they pulled a similar job on Harmony. Hit a relay to take out our eyes and ears, then stole two freighters from dry dock. That_ _ **cannot**_ _happen here. Reach is too damn important. We're the last line of defense against the Covenant. I want that relay back online NOBLE One. And you have the final say in the Gears evaluation and status, not Ackerson."_

"Sir, consider it done." He responded quickly and professionally.

" _Then I'll see you on the other side, Holland out."_ The holotable turned off with the comm-link and wnet black. Carter grabbed his helmet and turned around to see the new Spartan approach him, more than likely to introduce herself to her new commanding officer.

"Lieutenant."

"Commander, sir."

"I'm Commander Carter, NOBLE One or NOBLE Lead. I'm leading this team." The other Spartans began to fall out to the Falons and ready their weapons for the mission. Carter pointed to each of them so not to confuse her, "That's Kat, NOBLE Two, Emile & Jorge, Four & Five. You'll be riding with me and Jun, NOBLE Three outside, NOBLE Six."

Six looked to the others that she assumed were the Gears that Colonel Holland mentioned in the briefing, "And them, sir?"

Carter glanced briefly and turned his attention back to Six as he placed his helmet on. "I'll explain on the way. No doubt that you've already heard about the Liberty Square incident recently?"

Now it clicked in her head, she did briefly look over a report filed by ONI, "Just what ONI leaked to me."

That told Carter all he needed to know, as she was also formerly apart of ONI for a few months, not enough to get into some real dirty stuff, but enough to know certain restricted things and operations. "Then all you need to know is that they're friendly and on our side. They'll be taking the third Falcon."

He turned over to the one ahead of the others, "Sergeant Fenix, let's move out."

"You got it, sir." The one man named Fenix responded with respect.

The Gears filed out in front of Carter and Six as they were the last ones out and got the lights, "I'm not gonna lie to you lieutenant, you've stepped into some shoes the rest of squad would rather see unfilled. Me, I'm just happy to have NOBLE back up to full strength." They stepped into the Falcon with Jun waiting patiently in his seat, "Just one thing – I've seen your file. Even the parts the ONI censors didn't want me to. I'm glad to have your skill set, it's very impressive if I have to say. _But we're a team_ …" He put emphasis on the first part, and Six knew what it meant, "…that lone-wolf stuff, stays behind. Clear?" Carter waved the pilots to take off and head to the relay outpost.

"Got it, sir."

Jun who sat beside her, was finishing up on the touches to his Sniper, and broke the ice a bit, "Welcome to Reach."

It was probably the only nice thing that would be said to her the entire day.

* * *

 _ **And done! This took me a long ass time, as I painstakingly tried to think on how this would go down between the Gears and the UNSC with their circumstances, experience and roles. There will be appearances of people from other games and the novels in this story, not just the characters from Halo: Reach. And I will be taking the Battle of Reach section from the novel and the comic book into this story so we would have a better understanding of the event, as many people get confused with the timeline on Reach with the game and novel having fans say one is canon and the other isn't.**_

 _ **Right now, the Gears are on their way to prove themselves to the UNSC as viable resources and they need to find a way home, as they have no other options available to them.**_

 _ **I hope that you guys enjoyed this chapter and the characterization of the people seen in the chapter was right. If not, then let me know and I'll rectify that mistake.**_

 _ **I'm also considering bringing in Bernie**_ **(seen in Gears of War 3)** _ **, Alex Brand**_ **(from the comics)** _ **, Paduk and Sofia**_ **(from Gears of War: Judgment)** _ **into the story as well, but they would come in post ONI: SWORD Base, pre Nightfall missions as they would need some time to adjust to what the hell is going one, and getting familiar with being on a different planet and at war with a bunch of alien religious zealots.**_

 _ **As for the additional spot that Carter requested from Holland, well there were two other Spartan-III's on Reach at the time**_ **(at least ones whose names we knew)** _ **, and helped defend it, and made it out alive.**_

 _ **Now some members of NOBLE Team will live when they were supposed to die, same with other characters from Halo throughout the games and novels.**_

 _ **Next will be the Winter Contingency mission and it will be divided up into three sections as the chapters of the games:**_

 _ **NOBLE Team**_

 _ **Rebels Don't Leave Plasma Burns**_

 _ **Skeleton Crew**_

 _ **Anyways, please do drop a review, favorite and follow this story, and check out the other stories on my profile. Until next time :)**_

 _ **P.S. My Xbox Gamertag is**_ **Kry Daddy 117** _ **for those of you wondering if I'm up for gaming on Gears and Halo, and yes I own all of them.**_


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